976 gang members and associates arrested during @ICEgov surge #ProjectWildfire

Nearly 1,000 gang members and associates from 239 different gangs were arrested in 282 cities across the U.S. during Project Wildfire, a six-week operation led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The operation targeted transnational criminal gangs and others associated with transnational criminal activity.

“Criminal gangs inflict violence and fear upon our communities, and without the attention of law enforcement, these groups can spread like a cancer,” said ICE Director Sarah R. Saldaña. “That’s why ICE works with law enforcement partners around the country to stamp out gang activity wherever it takes place.”

Project Wildfire was a surge operation led by the HSI National Gang Unit and ran Feb. 23 to March 31. HSI special agents worked with 215 state, local and federal law enforcement partners, including ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), to apprehend individuals from various gangs.

This operation was part of HSI’s Operation Community Shield, a global initiative, where HSI collaborates with federal, state and local law enforcement partners to combat the growth and proliferation of transnational criminal street gangs, prison gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs in the United States and abroad. Through its domestic and international Operation Community Shield task forces, HSI leverages its worldwide presence and expansive statutory and civil enforcement authorities to mitigate the threats posted by these global networks, often through the tracing and seizing of cash, weapons and other illicit proceeds.

Most of the individuals arrested during Project Wildfire were U.S. citizens, but 199 foreign nationals were also arrested, from 18 countries in South and Central America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.

Of the individuals arrested, 976 were gang members and associates. HSI agents also arrested – or assisted in the arrest – of 231 other individuals on federal and/or state criminal violations and administrative immigration violations, for a total of 1,207 arrests. Of the total 1,207 arrested, 1,057 were males and 150 were females.

Of the 976 gang members or associates arrested: 913 were charged with criminal offenses and 63 were arrested administratively for immigration violations; 650 had violent criminal histories, including 19 individuals wanted on active warrants for murder and 15 for rape or sexual assault; and 199 were foreign nationals, of which 151 were gang members and gang associates.

The majority of arrestees were affiliated with the Sureños, Norteños, Bloods, Crips, Puerto Rican-based gangs and several prison-based gangs.

Enforcement actions occurred around the country, with the greatest activity taking place in the San Juan, Dallas, El Paso, Los Angeles and Detroit HSI areas.

Enforcement actions conducted during Project Wildfire include:

• In Puerto Rico and central Florida, 46 members of the Zorrilla criminal organization were arrested for various charges of manufacturing and distributing narcotics, money laundering and other related criminal activity.
• In Lubbock, Texas, HSI special agents and task force officers arrested 122 known or suspected gang members and associates from the Bloods, Crips Rollin 60s, Mexican Mafia, Sureños, West Texas, Raza Unida, Aryan Brotherhood, White Aryan Resistance, West Side, Gangster Disciples, Peckerwood, Texas Syndicate and West Texas Tango.
• In the Detroit area, HSI special agents and task force officers arrested 89 gang members and associates with ties to gangs such as the Latin Counts, Folk Nation, Sureños and Atherton Terrace.
• In the Chicago area, HSI special agents arrested 30 gang members and affiliates with ties to the Sureños 13, Latin Kings, La Raza, Conservative Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, 4 Corner Hustlers, Maniac Latin Disciples and the Vice Lords.
• In California’s Imperial Valley, HSI special agents arrested 28 individuals, including 10 documented gang members of the Brole, North Side Centro, West Side Centro, South Side Centro and Pilgrim Street gangs.

HSI special agents also seized 82 firearms, 5.2 kilograms of methamphetamine, 7.8 kilograms of marijuana, 5.6 kilograms of cocaine, 1.5 kilograms of heroin, $379,399 in U.S currency, counterfeit merchandise with a manufactures suggested retail price of $547,534 and five vehicles during Project Wildfire.

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Inspector Johnny Garces Admits Conspiring to Rig Contractor Selection Process for Community Development Projects

An inspector at the Union City Community Development Agency (UCCDA) admitted conspiring with contractors to rig the selection process for home improvement, sidewalk replacement and other projects, causing losses of at least $400,000, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Johnny Garces, 52, of Union City, New Jersey, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William H. Walls in Newark federal court to an information charging him with one count of conspiring with others to obtain by fraud funds provided by Union City.

According to documents in this case and statements made in court:

Between April 2007 and July 2011, Garces was an inspector at the UCCDA, a government agency that receives funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under a federal block grant that provides money for home improvement projects, sidewalk replacement and other projects.

From 2007 through 2011, Garces conspired with contractors Joseph Lado, 66, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, Leovaldo Fundora, 53 of Guttenberg, New Jersey, and others to rig the selection process for HUD-funded projects through false and misleading bids. In addition to instructing Lado and Fundora to submit phony, higher bids from competitors, Garces also fabricated higher bids from numerous fictitious companies so that Lado, Fundora and others would secure the projects.

The conspiracy charge to which Garces pleaded guilty carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Garces is scheduled to be sentenced on July 7, 2015. Lado and Fundora have both pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme and await sentencing.

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Why have so many Muslim states become hotbeds of organized crime?

Why have so many Muslim states become hotbeds of organized crime? Neil Thompson’s answer looks beyond depressed economies, faltering dictatorships and human rights abuses. Indeed, he sees too many individuals that have become corrupted by the countless opportunities that conflict provides.

Whenever a state collapses into civil war or economic anarchy, its organized crime groups find plenty of opportunities to grow in influence. This was the case in Albania in 1996-1997 when a series of pyramid schemes collapsed the economy. In the ensuing riots the government collapsed, the army and police disbanded and the mounting unrest allowed protesters to storm government arms depots. One crowd looted up to 500,000 rifles and other pieces of military equipment from the southern city of Lushnje. The stolen arms were promptly sold on the black market and the availability of plentiful supplies of cheap weapons and ammunition was a major spark for the start of war in neighboring Kosovo the following year. By 1999 transnational organized criminal gangs had helped change the supposedly sacrosanct lines of European borders. It was a seminal moment for a still under-appreciated non-state actor - globalized transnational criminal networks. The next might be provided by the Islamic world.

On Western Doorsteps

Westerners living in developed countries are often insulated from the reality of modern organized crime’s strength because the hubs of transnational criminal operations tend to be located in countries with weak economies and fragile state institutions. Consequently, too many Western analysts continue to see transnational criminal groups as a second tier threat, and focus instead on more obvious dangers such as militant Islamist networks or state-backed rebels fighting ‘proxy wars’. Yet, wherever state structures are unable to contain them, criminal groups have found spaces to expand and to diversify. This is as true in the globalized offline world as it is in the virtual spaces of the internet.

From the emergence of Eurasian mafias as ‘ mid-wives of capitalism’ in the post-Soviet space to the rise of Somalia’s pirate bands, organized criminal networks have an insidious ability to surprise the West with their arrival, the forms they assume and the unique challenges they pose to democracy and peace. Take the case of Mexico, a democratic middle-income country on the border of the world’s strongest military power. The US-backed war against its drug cartels has raged for almost a decade now and claimed the lives of over one hundred thousand people.

Currently the depressed economies and faltering dictatorships of the greater Middle East are primarily seen as a serious threat to international and regional security because they have created self-funding networks of violent religious extremists such as the so-called Islamic State. Another familiar consideration is the gross human rights abuses carried out by the security services of many regional governments. Yet, this analysis misses a potential third source of destabilization - networks of mafia-like groups whose roots lie inside state security services and/or the Islamist groups opposing them.

Many already-powerful Middle Eastern state agents have become thoroughly criminalized by the opportunities the chaos of war affords, in a region notorious for impunity. For instance, Egypt’s ex-President Hosni Mubarak and his sons were released from prison in January 2015, four years after their convictions on a variety of serious criminal charges, including conspiracy to murder, while in office. Meanwhile much of the revenue for Islamist groups like Islamic State is generated by proceeds from criminal activities or from taxing criminal groups. Consequently, the consolidation of war economies mean that criminal networks currently created or sponsored by the state or Islamist groups might well outgrow their origins and original purposes. The danger here is that these groups will not disappear when a conflict ends. Indeed, historical experience from conflicts in places like Colombia suggests that they adapt and persist in new forms.

Further Fallout

In a globalizing world, the networking impulses that have created transnational supply chains stretching thousands of miles for contraband goods are sure to blur the distinctions between state and non-state actor, law enforcer, rebel and criminal. Moreover, the unsettled end periods of military conflicts are often marked with a crime wave as individuals turn skills learned during war to private use. With poor economic prospects, a large black market economy and large numbers of guerrillas, paramilitaries, soldiers and secret policemen looking for new opportunities, the chances of an explosion in organized crime across the Middle East are high, to say the least. The overall failure of the Arab Spring will also play its part. So will the region’s youthful population, persistent high unemployment and geographical proximity to the European market. And let’s not forget about pre-establishment of human-trafficking involving countries like Libya, as well as high levels of corruption and impunity in the region’s state structures.

Conflicts also lead to the development of lawless zones that shelter criminal networks - as well as insurgent groups - from law enforcement activities. According to the Fund for Peace’s (FFP) Fragile States Index 2014, Syria, Libya, Yemen and several other countries with significant Muslim populations fall into the worst categories, indicating that the state no longer controls all its territory. In others, such as Egypt and Algeria, central authority is either compromised or very weak. A good example of this is Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, long a source of marijuana to European markets. There are nearly 40,000 outstanding warrants hanging over the heads of Bekaa residents. Yet, by retreating to the northern reaches of the valley local clans involved in drug farming have managed to defy Lebanon’s ineffective central authorities. In addition, the Hezbollah leadership has distanced itself from direct leadership of the clans but continues to demand a political, rather than legal, solution to the problem.

Wars also strengthen indigenous criminal organizations and weaken the state institutions charged with combating them, as resources are diverted into fighting insurgencies. Criminal growth can be partly be tracked by the increase of corruption, an inevitable side-effect of an increase in black market opportunities. Out of 174 nations, Transparency International’s 2014 corruption ratings rank Yemen at 161, Iraq at 170, Libya at 166 and Syria at 159. Scores in all four countries have fallen since 2012 and all four are still the scene of armed conflict and political instability.

Indeed, the effects of corruption and insecurity do not remain limited cleanly by borders but spill into neighboring states. NATO member Turkey has had a long history of oil-fuelled corruption dating back to the 1990s ‘Oil for Food’ UN program. Today Islamic State middlemen sell oil to smugglers, who bribe their way past Turkish gendarmes at the border and sell it to Turkish businessmen. The black market fuel is then sold onto the Turkish consumer at a fraction of its true worth. These transactions fuel attacks like the one that killed Saudi General Oudah al-Belawi, commander of border operations in Saudi Arabia’s northern zone in January. Organized crime in Turkey has therefore facilitated Islamist terrorism on the Saudi border, while Islamic State has helped corrupt to Turkey’s nascent democracy.

From East to West

Yet, unlike their European and Latin American, Italian counterparts, Islamic criminal enterprises have so far attracted little Western attention as an issue separate from terrorism. Nonetheless organized crime is an entrenched part of the political economy of many Muslim states. For example, an Afghan narcotics boom has already occurred according to the BBC as last year’s opium harvest reached a record high. The UN valued the 2013 crop at nearly $3bn (£1.86bn), up 50% from 2012. Indeed, cultivation has been rising since 2010, a reflection of the fact that Afghanistan currently produces more than 80% of the world's opium.

At the opposite end of the Islamic world are West Africa’s cigarette and cocaine smuggling operations – a very lucrative trade that is dominated by criminalized Islamist networks. These have grown out of the defeated remnants of Algerian jihadist groups, much as leftist insurgent groups have come to play an important in the drugs trade in Latin America. Interestingly, the jihadist considered to be at the forefront of these activities, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was once considered a minor threat and a pragmatist because his criminal business interests seemed more pressing to him. However, these same interests gave him the means to launch a devastating attack on the In Amenas gas plant in 2013.

It could also be claimed that the persistence of tribal or clan-based identities in parts of the Islamic world can geographically limit some present criminal operations. For example, as mentioned above, the farming families involved in the marijuana trade in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley rarely leave it due to many active warrants for their arrest outside the valley. Yet, just as the Middle East has already produced several multinational global terrorist networks there might also come a time when its criminal elements are clearly capable of reaching the same level of development. Meanwhile, the wars affecting the area have ironically given Middle Eastern criminal groups a larger global diaspora to blend in with and recruit from, facilitating a growth of operations outside their home countries.

This does not just include Western states, some of whom have been criticized for accepting few regional refugees, but also neighboring Muslim nations. Displaced Syrians now make up a quarter of Lebanon’s population for example. As far back as 2013, a UNHCR report found organized crime networks operating easily in the biggest Syrian refugee camp, Za'atari in Jordan. From Slow Boil to Breaking Point also described how Syrian refugees were paying up to $500 to middlemen to be 'sponsored' by Jordanian citizens. This entitled them to live outside of the lawless and overcrowded sites they found themselves in – it also represented another revenue stream for criminal groups. Criminal networks have also begun exploiting Syrian refugees by using them as drug mules. There has been a large spike in seizures of narcotics in neighboring countries according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime network.

A Grim Outlook

Four years after the start (and apparent collapse) of the Arab Spring, Western headlines still focus on the security threat of revolutionary Islamist militant groups. But there is no reason to suppose the emergence of factors favorable to the growth of mafia-type groups in the Islamic world will not also impact upon the West (and the rest) in the future. The toxic combination of broken economic and political systems, geographical proximity to lucrative European black markets, and a youthful and often traumatized population is an open invitation to criminal groups already operating in a vacuum of state authority. Similar circumstances produced generational crime waves of extraordinary virulence in the former Soviet Union and Latin America, which those areas are still coping with today. It’s entirely possible the Middle East is poised to follow in their footsteps.

Thanks to Neil Thompson.

Neil Thompson is researcher for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an Editor and contributor to the Future Foreign Policy Group. He holds an MA in International Relations of East Asia from the University of Durham.

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Due to Alliances Builit in Prison, Organized Crime is Alive and Well with Diversity and More Ethnicity

Organized crime is alive and well in New Jersey, despite ongoing efforts by law enforcement, in part because there are so many criminal enterprises from all over the world operating in the Garden State.

According to the FBI’s Newark Division, crimes in New Jersey are being committed by organized crime groups that span the globe including: La Cosa Nostra, also known as the Sicilian Mafia, Asian groups, African criminal enterprise groups and the Russian and Eurasian mobs.  New Jersey is also seeing crime activity from Balkan organized crime groups, which includes people who emigrated from Albania, Macedonia and Yugoslavia. In addition, the FBI is also monitoring more organized crime groups coming from the Middle East.

All of these mobs are driven to make money, but they’ll do it in different ways, according to Anthony Zampogna, FBI supervisory special agent in New Jersey and program coordinator for organized crime.

“You see La Cosa Nostra with the traditional gambling, loan sharking, extortion (and) truck hijackings. Those are some of the hallmarks of that group, but a lot of the health care fraud we see or insurance fraud (is) through Russian organized crime, and a lot of the solicitations for fraudulent investments that we see (is) emigrating from groups out of Africa,” Zampogna said.

He pointed out many ethnic mobs in New Jersey become involved in the drug trade, and frequently violence is threatened or used.

“In many cases mobs are not really any different than gangs. They use the same tactics and commit the same kinds of crimes, and we also see overlap where a lot of times they’ll work together,” Zampogna said. ”You’ll see a Russian group or an Italian group working with what is traditionally looked at as a street gang, the Bloods or the Crips.”

Many times these alliances are built in prison, according to Zampogna, where leaders of mobs and gangs will spend time together and continue the relationship once they get out.

He noted when ethnic mobs first came to this country they stuck together because they only trusted people they knew, but now they’re all branching out.

Zampogna said if you count the smaller organized criminal entities that are operating in the state, there are dozens of ethnic mobs in New Jersey.

Thanks to David Matthau.

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John Palazzolo Locked Up on Parole Violation, Planning Bonanno Family Takeover?

The Bonanno crime family may have lost its youth, but its wiseguys still have plenty of chutzpah.

John Palazzolo, 77, a reputed street boss of the clan’s Bronx faction, got locked up Friday after federal law enforcement officials caught him meeting with other mobsters — a violation of his parole terms.

The feds feared the old gangster was conspiring to take over Bonanno operations in Queens — which could possibly unleash a wave of violence among rival factions.

Citing allegations of “a conspiracy to conduct a war to control the Bonanno crime family,” federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered the ailing oldfella to jail pending a hearing next month.

Palazzolo, who was released in 2012 after doing 10 years for attempted murder, is barred from associating with fellow mobsters. But in past weeks, he was caught by surveillance having a suspiciously long meeting in the parking lot of a diner in Bayside, Queens with “Fat Anthony” Rabito, a consigliore of the Bonannos.

He also met with a mafioso with ties to reputed mob boss Michael “Mikey Nose” Mancuso, who has three more years left in federal prison for a murder rap and is believed to rule the family from the inside.

Those pow-wows are in violation of Palazzolo’s parole, prosecutors said in court.

“Is there still a leadership of the Bonnano family?” asked a puzzled Garaufis.

“Unfortunately, yes,” said assistant U.S. attorney Nicole Argentieri.

A source said that Palazzolo had recently lost influence in the organization’s power structure and was about to take matters into his own hands.

“He’s pissed,” the law-enforcement official said. “Once we found out, we had to stop it.”

Defense lawyer Flora Edwards argued the run-in with Rabito could have been “a casual meeting” and pointed to her client’s litany of health issues.

A resigned-looking Palazzolo, wearing track pants, a black hoodie and holding a plastic bag from Target, shuffled into the lock-up.

“I thought someone’s who’s 77-years-old and has medical problems will be happy to live a quiet life,” the judge told him.

He added that the power struggle involves another imprisoned mobster, calling it “one nightmare on top of another.”

The Bonanno family has been working to replenish its ranks following dozens of convictions in the past decade, many obtained after its boss and underboss turned into rats and testified.

New recruits and old timers are still engaged in loan sharking, racketeering and other illegal activities, said a source.

“It never ends,” he added.

Thanks to Oren Yaniv.

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U.S. Army National Guard Soldier and His Cousin Arrested, Alleged Plan to Attack Illinois Military Joliet Armory

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin, U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon of the Northern District of Illinois and Special Agent in Charge Robert Holley of the FBI’s Chicago Division announced that two Aurora, Illinois, men were arrested Wednesday night for allegedly conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a foreign terrorist organization.

Army National Guard Specialist Hasan Edmonds, 22, a U.S. citizen, was arrested without incident at Chicago Midway International Airport by members of the Chicago FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) while attempting to fly to Cairo, Egypt. Jonas Edmonds, 29, a U.S. citizen, was arrested without incident at his home in Aurora. Both defendants were charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois with one count of conspiring to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization.

As alleged in the complaint, in late 2014, Hasan Edmonds came to the attention of the FBI. The investigation subsequently revealed that he and Jonas Edmonds had devised a plan for Hasan Edmonds to travel overseas for the purpose of waging violence on behalf of ISIL. Hasan Edmonds, a current member of the Illinois Army National Guard, planned to use his military training to fight on behalf of ISIL. As part of their plans, Hasan Edmonds booked airline travel to depart yesterday from Chicago and arrive in Cairo today, with layovers in Detroit and Amsterdam.

As alleged in the complaint, both defendants also planned for Jonas Edmonds to carry out an act of terrorism in the United States after Hasan Edmonds departed. In particular, both defendants met with an FBI undercover employee and presented a plan to carry out an armed attack against a U.S. military facility in northern Illinois, an installation where Hasan Edmonds had been training. Jonas Edmonds asked the FBI undercover employee to assist in the attack and explained that they would use Hasan Edmonds’ uniforms and the information he supplied about how to access the installation and target officers for attack.

“According to the charges filed today, the defendants allegedly conspired to provide material support to ISIL and planned to travel overseas to support the terrorist organization,” said Assistant Attorney General Carlin. “In addition, they plotted to attack members of our military within the United States. Disturbingly, one of the defendants currently wears the same uniform of those they allegedly planned to attack. I want to thank the many agents, analysts, and prosecutors who are responsible for disrupting the threat posed by these defendants.”

“We will pursue and prosecute with vigor those who support ISIL and its agenda of ruthless violence,” said U.S. Attorney Fardon. “Anyone who threatens to harm our citizens and allies, whether abroad or here at home, will face the full force of justice.”

“The arrests today are the culmination of a successful investigation that involved a great deal of coordination and communication with our law enforcement and military partners,” said Special Agent in Charge Holley. “Throughout the course of this investigation, the defendants were closely and carefully monitored to ensure the safety of the public and our service men and women.”

Conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. If convicted, the court must impose a reasonable sentence under federal statutes and the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.

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Watch the Complete Series of The Sopranos!

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